The production of objects industrially, especially by mass production, is an operation of growing importance, which concerns all areas of economic activity, for example, the areas of the automobile industry, the aerospace industry, the aviation industry, acoustics, furnishing and plumbing, construction and public works, health care and also in the area of large consumer goods, such as luggage or toys.
In general, quasi any industrial activity or service requires the use of objects that, being specific to the particular activity, must be produced in large numbers, preferably at a limited cost.
The production of such objects can also involve operations whose nature is so diverse and varied as, for example, shaping, molding, molding from a casting, local consolidation, insertion, assembly, welding, cutting, protection or covering (“coating” in English) or decoration operations.
Finally, such production must be able to take into account materials as diverse as thermoplastic compositions, thermosetting compositions, cellular compositions, elastomers and/or vulcanizable compositions, glass or light alloys, which are, for example, reinforced with (glass, carbon, natural, etc.) fibers and/or have a sandwich structure and/or a honeycomb structure.
To limit the investment and operating costs of the production of a large number of objects, it is expedient to use a production method that utilizes electromagnetic induction phenomena to heat the materials for molding them or for not molding them.
According to such a method, a molding device 100 (FIG. 1) comprises inductors 102 that transmit an electric current that generates a magnetic field (not shown) such that the Foucault currents propagate in a conductor element, such as a metal, 104, located in the vicinity of the inductors 102.
These Foucault currents bring about a temperature rise of the conductor element 104, which transmits its heat, by conduction, to a material 106 to be molded, which is placed on its surface 105.
This conduction, or heat transfer, represented by arrows 103 in FIG. 1, now makes it possible to bring the material 106 to the desired temperature to carry out the molding thereof.
The present invention results from the observation that a method according to the prior art, such as that described by means of FIG. 1, has numerous drawbacks.
In fact, such a method requires the heating of the entire conductor element 104, even though only its surface 105, which is in contact with the material 106 to be molded, requires a rise in temperature.
In other words, the quantity of energy that must be supplied to raise the temperature of the material 106 corresponds to the male and/or female shapes of the objects to be produced.